In practice packaging systems are known with which packages are manufactured on a deep-draw packaging machine or tray sealing machine and then transported by conveyor belts singly and with the required spacing through or over inspection devices such as metal detectors and/or weighing machines. Then, these single packages are for example formed into groups, charged into an outer packaging, for example a carton, and put into storage. This can be carried out manually by a person or by a robot which takes the packages from the conveyor belt and puts them into the outer packaging.
To be able to use robots for automatically taking up packages from the conveyor belts the positions of the packages must be known or the packages must have a defined spacing to one another which is suitable for the gripper system. Preferably, gripper systems with vacuum cups are used here.
To save space and costs, which arise due to the area required by a number of packages in one plane, packages should be arranged as close together as possible or nested in the outer packaging. Packages usual in the food sector are plastic packages with a dimensionally stable surrounding edge, which also represents the sealing surface between the lower part and the lid film. Here, space reduction can be obtained by overlapping two adjacent packages by the width of the sealing edge. This overlapping in the outer packaging can be achieved with manual consecutive deposition of individual packages. With an automated system with a robot, this is possible through the transport of individual packages, but for high machine throughput, defined as packages per minute, this is not feasible.
A further known possibility is to take up packages with a gripper system, which is able to push the packages, still spaced during transport by a belt, towards one another into an outer packaging using a device on the gripper in order to produce the desired overlapping. A disadvantage is that these gripper systems are mechanically complicated and expensive and the accelerations and speeds are severely limited due to the increased weight.